Festival workers searching for an actor’s daughter who was dying after taking drugs looked in the wrong area of woodland, a jury has been told.
Louella Fletcher-Michie, the daughter of the Holby City and Coronation Street star John Michie, fell ill during Bestival in Dorset in September 2017.
Her boyfriend, Ceon Broughton, is on trial accused of manslaughter and supplying her with the party drug 2C-P. He denies the offences. It has been claimed he failed to seek medical help for her and filmed her body after she died.
John Michie and his wife, Carol, raced to Bestival after hearing their 24-year-old daughter “screeching” in a phone call home, the jury heard. They urged Bestival staff to search for her and told them she was in woodland.
Winchester crown court heard that it was wrongly assumed she was in part of the site called the Ambient Forest. She was eventually found in different woodland just outside the festival’s grounds.
Bestival’s “happiness manager”, Olivia Moedt, who deals with customer support, told the jury she took a call from the ill woman’s mother. “She sounded terrified on the phone,” she said. “I became worried too. I asked if she had any idea where they might be and she said ‘the forest’. As there was only one forest on the site; it was thought it was the Ambient Forest.”
Gemma Thorogood helped to coordinate the hunt for Fletcher-Michie. She said: “My colleagues did a thorough search around the perimeter and inside and nobody of that description was found.”
Stephen Kamlish QC, for defence, asked whether it was “unfortunate communication”. Thorogood said: “Yes it was, I never thought it was outside the perimeter of the event, we don’t have access out there.”
Another worker, Liam Mayet, whose job title was “head of happiness” said he was shocked and upset the next day when he heard that Fletcher-Michie had died. “I feel bad for the parents and wonder if there was anything more we could have done,” he said.
The jury heard that at one point Broughton emerged from woodland and asked a security worker for a torch so he could look for his girlfriend, who he said had overdosed.
Two workers broke the rules by leaving their post to help him search, the court was told, but Broughton sent a text – understood to refer to them – that said: “These pricks don’t give a fuck.”
Ezra Campbell, a friend of Fletcher-Michie and Broughton, told the court she had had her drugs confiscated but got them back by “sweet-talking” staff.
He said: “She told me on the night she came down she got frisked by security, they took them from her but she managed to get them back.”
Kamlish asked: “By sweet-talking someone?” Campbell agreed and added: “As it was her birthday that weekend she planned on taking drugs.”
Fletcher-Michie’s parents watched the court proceedings from the public gallery on Friday. Her mother dashed from the court before footage of her daughter smiling and enjoying the festival in a tent was played.
In another short clip that was found on her mobile phone and shown to jurors, Fletcher-Michie and Broughton appear happy at the festival and speak about hallucinating and “getting weird”.
Broughton, of Enfield, north London, denies manslaughter and supplying a class A drug. The trial continues.
